Olugbemi Moronfolu reflects on her Nest Residency

I started writing poetry as a child, mostly because I was confused.

There were many things that I did not understand.

I didn’t understand why I had to practice my pronunciation when other children did not.

I didn’t understand why people behaved the way that they did.

I didn’t understand why I was frequently anxious.

Writing poetry made sense, but I didn’t quite understand why that was the case.

Now I see that writing helps me to look upon the world and my own little bubble as if I am a spectator. I can process experiences without being weighed down by all of the emotion. I am more focused on finding the “right” words to capture the experience as best as I can. And even when I am exploring dark and difficult emotions, that process of putting the pieces together to create a picture is always beautiful.

Lots of my residency was spent exploring the poetry that was written by my younger self through the lens of my current self. I hoped that upon revisiting the poetry, I could craft it into something meaningful to both me and an audience.

I spent a considerable amount of time editing old poems. I refined them for structure, word choice and imagery. I wanted every element — even simple things like full stops and their use or lack of — to be intentional and feeding into the story being told and I was eager to play around.

One of the many poems that I edited is called Fine, a poem I first wrote when I was eleven:

Fine

I am perfectly FINE!

Not a care in the world.

After all, I am smiling, laughing hysterically

and quite literally bouncing around,

putting on a good show for the crowd.

Act over, curtains closed

and in the darkness,

I wipe off my smile because secretly,

I am dying. In silence. Within.

My mind wages war persistently –

it demands ‘MORE, MORE, MORE!”

and like a servant, I oblige.

I reason – or rather more, I don’t –

that I can fill the deep dark hole

residing in me with food.

But it’s no good; I never feel whole

because I’m perpetually starving! Craving

a self-acceptance, respect, and unconditional love

that can never come from food

and that I can never muster enough of

I also used my residency to write more poetry. I was discussing poetry with a fellow resident and talked about how vulnerable performing could be. She told me that spoken word can be quite frank. She then suggested that I write poetry that was a bit more veiled, could be an interesting writing exercise. I ended up writing a short poem called falling.

Falling

Teetering on the edge of the cliff.

You are rooted far away

Still, my heart is tethered to yours.

Our lifeline brittle, all the time, wearing thin

Till the fragile string gives in…

After her advice and attempting to write a poem, I realised that having prompts and pointers pushed me outside of my comfort zone. Instead of just writing, I had to spend time planning the way that I wanted the poem to take shape. The planning revealed my strengths and weaknesses. I am rarely lost for words, but my imagery can often be developed a lot more. Therefore, I decided to work more on prompts. After one of my residency days, I popped into The Works looking for something on poetry and I found “A little sunshine and a little rain: A Poetry Journal” by Sabrina Laura. I worked on a couple of prompts and saw where it led me.

Asides from writing, I also tackled performing poetry. This was immensely difficult because I do not like being noticed. However, as a big and tall black woman who is accidentally loud and still cannot pronounce some words properly, I am often noticed. And being on a stage performing poetry makes me more noticeable. Especially when that poetry is about my experiences and vulnerabilities.

I started tackling this by memorising some of my poems. Being able to remember a poem by heart gives me confidence. It also releases me from reading from a paper and I can focus more on eye contact, intonation and getting across my emotions. Memorising was easy, but performing to an audience or watching myself rehearse were more difficult. I only managed to rehearse once with an audience due to timings – but having an audience was useful and reassuring. I did, however, record myself performing several pieces. Recording the pieces and watching them back and other people watching them and giving their opinions, I think is a good starting point to start developing in my performance.

I thoroughly enjoyed the residency. It is not often that I get to work on my poetry. I am continuing to work on my poetry by writing a poem about something that I see early in the morning.